


Picture This

by xanavici



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Gen, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 03:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xanavici/pseuds/xanavici
Summary: Picture this: Jesse McCree as a happy, normal kid.Until the Omnic Crisis hits.





	Picture This

**Author's Note:**

> Was going through my drive and found this fic that I originally posted on tumblr and forgot to post here as well.
> 
> Enjoy!

Picture this:

Jesse McCree, son of Neil and Isabella McCree, growing up on a small farm on the outskirts of Santa Fe.  It’s got cows and chickens and horses and sheep, and he helps care for them, he loves them. He’s a rowdy little boy with dirt on his knees and lightning in his smile.  He’s a sweetheart and a troublemaker, a carefree adventurer and too smart for his own good. A good eye, a quick wit, a strong will. 

He helps his mom with the cooking and his dad with the animals.  On Sunday nights they eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate. On Tuesday nights he plays chicken with the chickens as he tries to collect their eggs.  Every other Thursday he goes grocery shopping with his mom and at the end he gets a candy bar. He loves his parents. He loves his life.

 

Picture this:

Jesse McCree, seven years old when the Omnic Crisis starts.  At first Santa Fe is too small, too insignificant, to be put in the war path, but that doesn’t last for long.  The attacks are a surprise, heralded by screaming jets in the middle of the day as OR-13s and bastion units seemingly rise out of the dust and sand as they march through the city.  

His mama yells at him to put his favorite clothes in his backpack and to grab his stuffed horse.  The three of them pile into the truck and make a break for the train station. It’s packed there and panicked.  His parents both grip his hands so tight it hurts, but he’s too scared to complain. His dad lets go to run up ahead and try to save some space.  An explosion goes off nearby, close enough for everyone in the station to feel it and scream with panic. The crowd rushes forward and Jesse starts to cry as it gets too loud and too hot and too tight.

Another explosion.  Another rush forward.  And the sweat on the palm of his hand and the strength of the crowd makes his hand slip out of his mama’s grip.  He screams and tries to fight against the flow of the sea of people around him, but it’s hopeless and the force carries him one way while he thinks he sees his mama go another way.

 

Picture this:

Many trains in the station, waiting on tracks to go any direction as long as it’s away from here.  Jesse McCree gets pulled on a train going east. His parents… he doesn’t see his parents. The train pulls away with him still screaming and banging on the doors.

They doesn’t stop all night or the next morning.  They doesn’t stop until they reaches Fort Worth, Texas.  Jesse’s voice is gone and his eyes burn long before then.  Off the train he gets taken to a big building in the city that has a bunch of other kids in it, separated from their families too.  Jesse hates it. He just wants his mom.

Jesse McCree is told they’ll find his parents, day after day after day, until it loses its meaning and becomes white noise.  Becomes lies. He and a couple other boys get sent to live with some old man and woman in a too big house. Just until the end of the Crisis they say, then we’ll get you back home.

The Crisis ends a year later.  Jesse doesn’t go back home.

As broken promises turn to lies, his sorrow turns to anger.  Every new house he’s sent to makes him angrier. Everytime he lashes out with his anger he gets shuffled along to a new house.

 

Picture this:

Jesse McCree, fifteen, and yet also too old for his age.  He’s got blood on his knuckles and ice in his eyes. He’s learned to hide the anger better, but that doesn’t stop him from letting it out when it becomes too much.  Petty theft, vandalism, anything to feel something other than empty for just a second.

Then, he meets Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe.  He wants nothing to do with her at first, but then she gets him.  Empty, hurt, lonely, angry. The decision is simple and they make their own family.

 

Picture this:

Everything gets torn away again by a man in black with death in his eyes but hope in his voice.  Fuck it, Jesse can start again, he’s had to do it before.

 

Picture this:

For the first time in ten years Jesse McCree feels… okay.  The job keeps him busy, his friends keep him grounded. Reyes- Reyes unexpectedly fills a crack in his heart that formed in a train station and he had thought scarred over long ago.  Jesse tries to keep a safe distance from everyone and hide it all behind a smile, but Reyes sees right through that, and it’s hard to go back to isolation after finally finding some people that just might stick around.

 

Picture this:

Jesse McCree, the day after his twenty seventh birthday, gets pulled into Gabe’s office.  He gets handed a folder which he almost drops as soon as he opens it. Staring back up at him are two faces he thought he’d never see again.  Neil and Isabella McCree.

Gabe called in some favors and pulled some strings and tracked them down, from California to Colorado, back to the small farm on the outskirts of Santa Fe.  They moved back when the area was finally deemed safe again. Jesse was already running Deadlock by then. They look older, and tired, and like a piece of them is missing.  

Also tucked into the file is a completed but unsigned time off request and a plane ticket.

For the first time Jesse can remember, he’s stunned speechless.  He doesn’t know what to say- what there is to say. All he can do is try not to cry and hug Gabe tight.  He tries not to think about how the last time he hugged someone like this was the last time he hugged his dad.

 

Picture this:

Jesse McCree, former gangster, current black ops agent, sits in a rental truck at the gate entrance to a farm in Santa Fe.  In the distance he can see a small house, and he knows it’s residents are there.

Jesse McCree is scared shitless.

_ Drive up.  Don’t scare them.  Tell them who you are.  Hope they remember you. Hope they still want you. _

Jesse forces himself to take the truck out of park and finish the journey.  When he finally pulls up to the house he sees his mama planting flowers in the bed in front of the porch.  Isabella McCree’s got gray in her hair and wrinkles on her face, but her eyes have the same fire and passion that Jesse remembers.  She stands up and turns around when she notices the unfamiliar car. The gardening trowel is held nervously in her hands.

“Neil, we have company” she calls out.

The front door opens and Jesse takes another sucker punch to the gut.  Neil McCree’s got a brace on his knee and glasses framing his face, but he still stands tall and proud.

_ Don’t scare them.  Tell them who you are.  Hope they remember you. Hope they still want you. _

He steps out of the car and holds his stetson over his heart

“I’m sorry to interrupt you like this but I- I’m-”  He curses under his breath and scrubs a hand over his face as every word he prepared evaporates from his mind.

_ Tell them who you are.  Hope they remember you. Hope they still- _

“Jesse?”

For a moment, just a moment, the world stands still.  The sun stops baking them where they stand, the wind stops whistling over the sand and dirt, every single living being holds its breath.

Jesse slowly lowers his hand and finds Isabella walking towards him with jerky steps.  The trowel lies in the sand. Her hands shake and tremble. When he’s within arm’s reach she reaches up and cradles his face between her hands.  Her eyes are wide and glossy and dart all over his face only stopping when she pushes aside the hair of his mustache and finds the whisper thin scar that bisects his lips.  One of their meaner chickens gave that to him back before he learned how to properly hold them.

“Jesse?”

“Mama?”

 

Picture this:

Jesse McCree, twenty years later, in the arms of his parents again.  He’s got blood on his hands, and a weight on his shoulders. He’s got joy in his eyes, and love in his heart.

 

Picture that.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at: cryptidhanzoshimada  
> Find me on twitter @xanavici


End file.
